


the last love story god has to tell

by eurydicees



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Aziraphale and Crowley Met Before The Fall (Good Omens), Bittersweet Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Canon, The Fall (Good Omens), if love acceptance and yearning are your kink then this fic is for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-11-25 17:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20916086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydicees/pseuds/eurydicees
Summary: It goes like this: before the world ends, before hell rises, and before heaven looks down, an angel and a demon fall in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was intended to be inspired by "and, so on" by PaintedVanilla but then i went in a very different direction. i wrote the first 12/13 chapters in a week and then the last one took two months. no beta we make typos like men. thank u for reading.

It goes like this: a tragedy centers on a villain, and the reader sympathises. A demon might be a villain, and a reader might be an angel. 

It goes like this: two angels hide in a garden. 

“I’ll build you the universe,” the first whispers, “I’ll give you the stars and nebulas and galaxies.” 

Aziraphale smiles, closed his eyes. All he can do is feel, feel his lover’s hands on Aziraphale’s skin, waist, wrists, cheeks. He presses kisses to the back of Aziraphale’s hands, lips cold and soft, and all they can do is melt. They’re not supposed to indulge in such sensations, the physical is unbecoming of the ethereal, but that doesn’t stop them. 

“I don’t need the stars,” Aziraphale whispers. “Just you, my love, just you.” 

“I’ll give you the stars anyways,” he says. He pulls Aziraphale closer, as if he can’t bear to be even inches apart. They could stay here for an eternity (Aziraphale does not think he knows what eternity is, yet, but he will), or they could stay here for a human heartbeat. Either way, it will feel just as good. 

The garden grows around them, the plants getting higher and the foliage thicker as they lie there. They could become part of this forest, sink into the ground, and as long as they were holding hands, it would be peaceful. It’s not the Garden of Eden, not yet-- just a small oasis in a desert where angels don’t look down and humans don’t venture. 

There are pockets of oasis on Earth and in heaven and in places no human has discovered yet where the two hide. He has always been good with plants, and Aziraphale is motive enough to make him want to create a garden. He miracles rosaceae and helianthus and salix babylonica and platanus occidentalis and plants that don’t have names yet, because he invented them just for this garden. 

“Will you give me your love, too?” Aziraphale asks, as if he is at all unsure. It is forbidden, this kind of love. Angels don’t have carnal desires, don’t have wants in the same way that the humans below do. They don’t need food or breath or love, but Aziraphale thinks he would decay without his lover anyways, thinks he would rot from the inside out if his lover wasn’t there to keep the sin at bay. 

“All of it,” he promises, and that is enough for now. 

Aziraphale meets his eyes, and they’re golden, like a star that God has yet to create. Aziraphale wants to freeze it in the sky, name it, give it to the humans as a gift and say, _This is not half as beautiful as the real thing is,_ and, _The real thing is all mine._

“It’s dangerous work,” Aziraphale says. He glances at the sky above them, but sees only a canopy of green. The trees grow thicker around them, and it’s a small miracle when the sunlight manages to stream through the branches. “If anyone found out…” His voice trails off. He doesn’t want to think about it. 

He shakes his head, trailing his fingers across Aziraphale’s stomach where his shirt, the loose uniform of Principalities, has ridden up. “It wouldn’t matter, not to me. They can’t do anything that would make me want to stop this.” 

There are threats, Aziraphale knows, that would make him want to stop, would make anyone want to cower. They lay heavy on Gabriel’s tongue everytime that Lucifer asks about free will, as if free will is something that a devotee, a servant should get. 

“We could fall,” Aziraphale says quietly. The words make him shiver, and the sun burns brighter, the leaves shifting just slightly. 

“Love isn’t a sin.” 

Aziraphale squeezes his eyes shut again, thinks about the stars. He will make them for Aziraphale, craft them out of gold dust and celestial things, shape them into promises and kisses and things no other angel would ever understand. Perhaps they are the first angels to ever love in a way that can be lost. Perhaps that makes it all the more paramount. 

“Is that what this is?” Aziraphale asks, voice quiet. He doesn’t want anyone but his lover to hear this; not the birds singing nor the butterflies with their stained glass wings nor the beetle with its shining back. It’s something secret, just for the two of them, like so many things are. “Is this love?” 

Aziraphale can sense his smile. He has always been confident in a way that Aziraphale hasn’t felt. There’s not a trace of fear in his words when he says, “Haven’t you been watching the humans? Haven’t you seen how they can fall in love and it fills up their lives with an ocean, how they have something more than worship when they kiss? That’s how I feel about you, that ocean swelling up in my lungs and spilling over-- Zira, I’m in love with you.” 

There isn’t room in his words for a pause or a doubt, but Aziraphale takes a moment anyways. Love is something reserved for invocation, reserved for serving their Creator. So much is meant for worship (but this is just a different kind of worship, Aziraphale thinks, and his lover is angelic enough that maybe that’s okay). 

Aziraphale turns his head, meeting his eyes. Aziraphale could lie in this garden for a thousand years, counting fireflies and looking at the constellations between tree branches and holding his hand, and that would make Aziraphale feel bigger and more important inside than God’s love ever had. 

“We’re not human,” Aziraphale finally reminds him, but it isn’t a protest or a denial. Aziraphale knows his thoughts on that. Angels might not have been supposed to be able to fall in love, but he would rather have this than be an angel (Aziraphale doesn’t know if he agrees, but that’s not what matters, what matters is that they’re touching and it feels pure in a way that God’s love has never felt). 

“We’re angels,” he agrees. He watches Aziraphale closely, studying the curve of his stomach, the soft pads of his fingertips. “Angels can only do good, remember? So maybe that means this has to be good too.” 

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t know if God meant to have this kind of logic possible to think, this kind of small rebellion. No, he thought, not rebellion-- rebellions are how you Fall, and Aziraphale doesn’t plan on doing that anytime soon. He honestly doesn’t know if love is a rebellion, or thinking that it's not is going to be a good enough defense for God. There’s so much he doesn’t know about Her. 

“So angels can’t do anything wrong, you’re saying?” Aziraphale asks. 

His lover shrugs. “It’s possible.” 

Aziraphale considers this, catching his hand and giving it a small squeeze. “So if I were to say I love you back, that’d be good, right?” 

He smiles, and his golden eyes glitter, and that is enough of an answer. Aziraphale says it.


	2. Chapter 2

It goes like this: one angel is more afraid of God than he is of falling. One angel is more afraid of falling than he is of God. 

It goes like this: the remaining angels watch from heaven, eyes wide. 

“Did you see them?” Nithael whispers, voice hard with something akin to awe. “Did you see them falling?” 

Aziraphale is choking on spit and breath and heartache when he says yes. 

They fell like ash or bloodless raindrops or burnt snow or Aziraphale’s heart cracking in two. They fell in a way that he can’t put into words, because he was too busy with the screaming in his head. Angels aren’t supposed to know fear or loss, but Aziraphale couldn’t put any other words to it when he saw them falling. 

They put up a valiant fight, the kind only someone who built stars could put up. But it’s hard to win a fight against an ineffable God. It’s hard to win a fight against something so much bigger and stronger and more impossible than you. It’s hard to win a fight when you don’t even know the game. 

In the end (Aziraphale supposed that this was, in reality, just the beginning), there hadn’t been a rebellion to quell. There had only been angels who weren’t angels anymore. There had only been God, swiping Her hand across heaven and purifying it. There wasn’t a moment to stop it. 

Being an angel only takes you so far in the eyes of God. You can do an eternity of work for Her, but you still won’t be done. You can build stars and name them after people, you can flood deserts and call it mercy, you can pray every night before you sleep, but that doesn’t mean She will forgive a mistake. You can work endlessly, but that doesn’t mean you are forgivable. 

When the rebellion came, Lucifer fell first. Then the others began to fall. They found the edges of heaven, they found holes in the ground, and then they fell with burning wings. Aziraphale watched, helpless. 

His lover fell, and Aziraphale hadn’t been able to do anything. He had reached out, reached downwards and realized that an angel could only reach so far, and now there were depths to the world that there had never been before. 

He is good, Aziraphale tells himself, over and over and over again. He was good, he was good, he was good, he was good. He didn’t mean to rebel. He just asked too many questions, thought about things too much. That isn’t a sin (except it is). 

But however much Aziraphale believes his lover deserves forgiveness, that doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. God doesn’t work on the same principles as everyone else. Angels are supposed to be on the same wavelength, but sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes the wire stutters and trips and goes the wrong way. The only reason Aziraphale didn’t fall and his lover did was that Aziraphale was in the right place at the right time. 

“Did you see them?” Uriel asks, fascination in her voice. “Did you see them falling? It feels impossible.” 

Aziraphale nods. It was heartbreaking, but angels didn’t have hearts, and so perhaps he felt nothing at all. Perhaps it hurt more-- somewhere in the base of his throat, building up onto his tongue and falling down into the pit of his stomach like magma, until he felt he could puke fire. 

“It’s not our place to question God,” Aziraphale says quietly. He is broken down, fallen in such a different way. He is hollow. 

Gabriel, who has never liked him, is suddenly in charge. Tells them the names of all the fallen, the names they’re never allowed to repeat again. God has named them all demons, sinners, the fallen. Saying their angelic names is a sin. 

Aziraphale leaves the meeting, finds a garden. It’s one of the ones he and his lover hid away in, where it was just the two of them and no one else. It’s dying. The miracles his lover made are coming undone, the leaves shrivelling up and turning brown, the trunks of the trees growing moldy. 

He collapses on his knees in the dirt, burying his palms in a carpet of dead leaves. He says his lover’s name, over and over and over again. He doesn’t want to forget it. It’s a new mantra, a chant, and he can’t ever stop, because if he stops, he can’t ever start again, and that might kill him. He says his name a hundred times, a thousand times, and then-- then he begins to choke on it. It begins to burn. 

It tastes like a cigarette burn on his tongue, like the mint taste of his name was turning to nicotine. He could feel smoke heating up, burning the roof of his mouth. He gasps, and exhales smoke. 

He says the name again. Chokes again. Tears are stinging and pricking at his eyes, sliding down his cheeks. He says the name and chokes and cries and all of this heartbreak tastes like hellfire. However many times he tries to say it, his tongue just burns hotter, like he’s pressed a torch to it, flames licking up his mouth and down his throat. 

Nithael finds him, an eternity later, when the trees have become skeletons and the grass has become weeds. Their oasis is desert again, and Aziraphale doesn’t have it in him to bring it back. 

“It burns, doesn’t it?” Nithael asks. He hesitates for a moment, searching Aziraphale’s eyes for some kind of answer. Then, he sticks his tongue out part way, and Aziraphale can see a burn on the center of it, in a perfect circle. He closes his mouth and says, softly, “I tried too.” 

There must be some kind of curse on the names, Aziraphale figured. Briefly, he wondered whose name Nithael tried to say, then decides he doesn’t care. He can’t find much to care about, much he can think about, over the sound of his heart bursting. 

Aziraphale takes a deep breath, shoulders sagging. There’s so much he wants to say and none of the courage to say it. “Did you see them fall?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Nithael says. “It was beautiful.” 

Aziraphale closes his eyes, sees stars. They’re gold.


	3. Chapter 3

It goes like this: an angel falls, his wings burning, having flown too close to the sun. No one catches him. 

It goes like this: an angel meets a demon, and swears they’ve met before. They do it again and again and again. 

His name is Crawly. It tastes like smoke on Aziraphale’s tongue. 

Crawly remembers some things, but not the important ones. He remembers what God’s love was like, but only so that he can know what he lost. He remembers how beautiful heaven was, but only so that he can compare it to hell. 

He doesn’t remember Aziraphale’s lips on his wrists, the gardens they hid in, or the flowers Aziraphale named for him. He doesn’t remember his hands on Aziraphale’s stomach, the sunlight on Aziraphale’s skin, or the way they used to whisper promises to each other. 

He has wings, a dark velvet black that extends from his shoulders like a shadow. The muscle ripples when he moves, a dark motion that makes Aziraphale swallow. The feathers are clean and well groomed, and Aziraphale is left to wonder who does that for him (there are places in the back that he can’t reach, Aziraphale knows this like he knows the spots on his own wings that he can’t reach). 

His eyes-- they’re still golden. Yellow, more accurately. Snake-like. They’re piercing, like Crawly can see straight through them to see all of Aziraphale’s secrets. Aziraphale can’t bring himself to meet those eyes, can’t bring himself to look straight at Crawly. It hurts too much to have the being he once knew so well, reduced to something blackened and burnt. 

He doesn’t smile at Aziraphale, but his lips quirk up just a bit, like there’s some imperceptible amount of muscle memory there. He’s still beautiful, as fallen as he is. Aziraphale hates himself for thinking it. 

When it begins to rain, Aziraphale covers Crawly with his wings. Crawly figures they could both will themselves dry, but this way is better. It feels more comfortable and natural. Crawly almost wants to reach up and touch Aziraphale’s wings, bury his fingers in the white feathers, but he knows he can’t. He doesn’t want to make the angel the same kind of filthy he is. 

A few centuries pass by, and Aziraphale tries to move on. There’s no one else for him, he knows that, but the angel he knew is gone, and he has to make his peace with that. Crawly, who becomes Crowley, doesn’t notice. The thing about being the one left behind is that you’re the only one with anything to miss. The other is already gone. 

Being immortal is a lonely business, Crowley discovers. He exists in limbo, wandering around the world, doing his job. He gets his commendations and his reprimandments, and none of it is enough to make him feel whole. 

He doesn’t know if he felt whole back in heaven either. He tries not to think about it, but Aziraphale is a constant reminder. Somehow, he ends up running into Aziraphale at least once every few decades. He doesn’t know if it’s coincidence, or God’s grand plan, or if Aziraphale is searching for him, but he doesn’t think he minds. 

There are rumors, on some aging day in Athens, about the bird-human on the mountain. The Greeks don’t believe in angels-- a fact which Crowley finds hilarious-- but Crowley knows who it is as soon as he heard the rumor. He climbs the mountain the next day. 

His feet are sore and the sun is setting by the time that he reaches the top. Aziraphale is sitting on a rock, his wings dripping over his shoulders and dragging on the ground. The tips are getting brown, stained with the dirt. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley calls, stepping forward. Part of him feels he’s intruding, part of him doesn’t care. He shouldn’t care. “You know, the locals think they’re seeing a monster. They’ll be sending Herakles up here next.” 

Aziraphale turns, and somehow finds a smile on his lips. “Been a while, my dear. What finds you in this beautiful town?” 

“Oh there’s going to be a plague soon,” Crowley said cheerfully.

“Well we can’t have that,” Aziraphale said, equally cheerfully. “I’d better stick around then.” 

“As you wish, angel,” Crowley said. He sits down next to the angel, who dutifully shifts over. The wings are big enough to wrap around Crowley’s shoulders, but Crowley thinks he might burn if he touches the feathers. Aziraphale keeps them a careful few inches away. 

Crowley glances over at Aziraphale. There’s a faint glow about him, evening out the dark shadow Crowley casts. He wants to unfold his wings, but there’s something shameful about the inky color. It’s not something he wants Aziraphale, who is holier-than-thou, to see. 

“This is the place I feel closest to heaven,” Aziraphale says quietly. He looks out towards the setting sun, where the light is melting across the horizon, spilling over in a thousand shades of red. “Isn’t the sunset beautiful?” 

Crowley nods. He’s not supposed to know or love beautiful things, but the setting of the sun feels different. The sun is something in between heaven and hell-- burning hot, and so, so brilliant. 

“Do you like it down here?” Crowley asks, feeling like he’s edging on something dangerous here. 

Aziraphale doesn’t look at him, just watches the sun. It’s almost down. “Yes,” he said finally. “I won’t say it’s better than heaven, but it’s beautiful in its own way.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley agrees. He wants to know more, but part of him is sure that he’s pulled enough out of Aziraphale for the night. He doesn’t want to push it. 

The wind whistles quietly, and Aziraphale’s wings shift and get a few inches closer to Crowley. A shiver runs down Crowley’s spine, like something crawling over his skin, an itch, an ache. He wants to touch them, find something holy at his fingertips. “What does it feel like? To grant a miracle?” 

Aziraphale hesitates. “You could find out. Grant a miracle yourself.” 

Crowley doesn’t know what to say to that. So he just sits, watching as the light faded. He thinks he was made to sit here in the dark, watching shadows pass over a rising moon. 

“What does it feel like to commit a sin?” Aziraphale asks. He thinks he knows the answer, but he wants to ask anyways. He wants to hear Crowley talk, wants to hear more secrets spill from his lips. 

Crowley smirks at him. “You could find out, angel.” 

“I should have seen that coming.” 

“You should have,” Crowley agrees. His words are softened by the darkness, until it's less teasing and more familiar. “What if… what if we did?” 

Aziraphale frowns, already shaking his head. “Absolutely not.” 

“Just once,” Crowley says, nudging him quietly. “Give someone down there a nightmare.” 

“I will not be tempted by you.” 

Crowley smiles again, and Aziraphale can see the quick dash of his forked tongue running over his lips. Another reminder that this isn’t the angel Aziraphale knew. This is a fallen angel, and Aziraphale knows he isn’t supposed to be here, talking to him. Enjoying himself. 

“It wouldn’t kill you,” Crowley says, “or make you Fall. It’d take a lot more than a nightmare to make an angel like you fall.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aziraphale asks with a frown. 

Crowley shrugs, leaning forward on his knees. “You’re a good one,” he says. “I can tell. It’d take a lot to make you unholy.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. It’s all he can think of to say. 

Crowley nods. He can’t think of anything else to say either. Aziraphale is quiet next to him, but slower than anything, Crowley feels a brush against his shoulders. Aziraphale folds his wings around Crowley, and there’s a warmth in his stomach that demons aren’t supposed to be able to feel. Hell doesn’t have a name for it, yet. 

“Don’t,” says Crowley. But for all the steady strength in his voice, he wants to touch, he wants to touch so badly. He hates himself for it.

“Okay,” says Aziraphale. He pulls back.

They sit there for awhile longer, watching clouds dust the tips of mountains. It doesn’t get cold, and maybe that’s a miracle thing or maybe it’s an evil thing or maybe it’s a Godly thing. Maybe it’s just the weather. Aziraphale doesn’t have the answers to anything anymore.


	4. Chapter 4

It goes like this: they break each other’s hearts. 

“Do you remember anything?” Aziraphale asks one day. His voice is quiet underneath the pounding of the rain and the alcohol slick down his throat. He doesn’t know what year it is, or where they are, just that it’s comfortable, and this might as well be an oasis in a desert. Crowley watches him from the seat across from Aziraphale’s chair, eyes bright. They’re entrancing and Aziraphale doesn’t want to look away. 

“Some things,” Crowley says. His voice is harder than Aziraphale’s voice had been. He doesn’t want to betray everything he’s feeling, every glimpse of his past that he holds tight against his heart, every memory that he wants so badly to both reject and encompass. It’s a dark dichotomy, every feeling strung between dismissal and hate and desire and greed.

Aziraphale hesitates for a moment. He doesn’t want to know, but he does, so badly. “Like what?” 

“Gardens,” Crowley said, licking his lips with his forked tongue. “Harps. Cherubs. Pearly white gates.” 

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Heaven has no harps and no cherubs and no pearly white gates, be real, Crowley.” 

“The feeling of being loved,” Crowley murmurs, after a moment. He takes a long drink of his scotch, a drop slithering down his chin. “I suppose that was God.” 

“I suppose,” Aziraphale echoes. “Do you-- do you remember other angels?” 

“No,” Crowley says, sharp and dangerous. There’s always been an edge to him, his demonic side only a wrong comment away. Then, “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“We knew each other,” Aziraphale blurted out. It feels like a dam bursting, like that ocean Crowley had talked about once upon a time was suddenly spilling out and flooding his world. They could drown in this confession, could sink below the ripples and claw at each other’s throats hopelessly, until all breath is gone and there is only murky water. 

Crowley stares at him. He fumbles at the couch, searching for something, and finds it. Slowly, he pulls the glasses over his eyes. It’s like pulling window shades over something that Aziraphale wants desperately to see. As Aziraphale breaks down his walls, Crowley has built up another fortress. 

“Oh,” Crowley says. His voice is quiet, quieter than Aziraphale has ever heard it. There are a thousand thoughts behind the single syllable, a thousand things he can’t bring himself to say. He stares at Aziraphale from behind the glasses, watching carefully. When he speaks again, it’s the first time Aziraphale has heard him upset in centuries. “We were... friends?” 

“Something like that,” Aziraphale whispers. His eyes flit anywhere around the room that isn't Crowley. Even with the glasses on, his shoulders are drooped and there’s not a hint of confidence in his lips. Where Crowley’s voice used to be a slow, relaxed drawl, there’s something vulnerable in it now. Something breakable. Aziraphale knows he has to be careful, but for the first time, he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t care. He needs Crowley to know. 

“Oh,” Crowley says again. He swallows visibly, trying to keep himself together. Aziraphale knows the signs, knows what it looks like when Crowley begins to fall apart, and he knows that’s what’s happening now-- the stillness of his fingers, the sudden breathing, the bitten lips, the slight tremble of his knees. “Why would you tell me that?” 

Aziraphale swallows. “I don’t-- I don’t know. I needed you to-- ”

“Why the fuck would you tell me that?” Crowley hisses, suddenly angry and snake-like and cracking in the middle. He stands, and crushes the glass in his fist. He winces, stares at it like he’s surprised he did it. Blood coats his palm, drips onto the rug. His face is unreadable, the glasses pressed high up on the bridge of his nose. Again, “Why the fuck would you tell me that?” 

Aziraphale stills, refuses to look at him. Crowley doesn’t understand, can’t understand the pain that this is-- watching the person he loved become a demon, having to pretend that this is nothing. 

“I needed you to know,” he tries to say. 

Crowley begins to pace, steps loud against the floorboards, echoing like a drumbeat, though Aziraphale knows for a fact that there’s no echo in this room. Crowley is shaking now, his hands trembling as he wraps his arms around his stomach like he’s trying to hold his organs in. 

“I don’t-- ” Crowley stutters out, trying to regain some semblance of control and failing miserably. He turns to Aziraphale, staring straight at him. Aziraphale can feel the weight of his eyes everywhere against his skin, suddenly running red hot. 

“Don’t you see how cruel that is?” Crowley spits. “To-- to know that not only is there something-- something I’m never going to get back that-- that you have, but not only-- that you had me, when I was good-- and now I’m this-- and it will never, has never been enough, fucking Christ, I know I’m not good enough for you, but I never thought-- ”

Aziraphale stares as Crowley breaks off, drops his hands. There’s so much unknowable in the parting of Crowley’s lips, the slight exhale of breath he doesn’t need. Aziraphale could choke on it. He wants to explain that it isn’t what Crowley thought, he wants to explain what it is, that the feeling of love he remembers had been Aziraphale, that it’s beyond painful to pretend nothing had happened. But he can’t find the words. 

“God-- you fucking angels,” Crowley hisses, “you have no idea what it feels like to lose.” 

Aziraphale swallows down everything he wants to say. He reaches a hand up, as if to touch Crowley, to comfort him, it’s a gesture he’s made so many times before, but Crowley just slaps his hand away. 

“Damn you,” he whispers. 

Then he disappears. There’s the sound of a snap, Aziraphale blinks, and the smell of mint is all that’s left behind. He’s never felt so goddamn ashamed of being an angel. 

He doesn’t see Crowley for another decade.


	5. Chapter 5

It goes like this: two people fall apart and then come back together, and do it wrong and then right and then wrong again and again and again. In another life, perhaps they would get it right on the first try. 

“He’s causing a war,” Gabriel says, his voice a low growl. There’s something unangelic about it, something almost deadly. It’s ironic, Aziraphale thinks, that a being meant to be the epitome of purity could be this dark. “Stop it, Aziraphale.” 

“It’s a small war,” Aziraphale says, as if that helps. It clearly doesn’t. 

Gabriel stares at him, his mouth set in a straight line. “Don’t think I don’t know what you told him, you pathetic excuse for an angel. Be grateful I’m not punishing you. Be grateful I’m not punishing him.” 

“Gabriel,” Aziraphale says, almost a whisper, almost a plea. Before the name is fully beyond his lips, though, Gabriel had turned on his heel and disappeared. 

At the doorway, Nithael sighs, staring at the place where Gabriel had been. “You haven’t changed at all,” he says, glancing between the floor and Aziraphale. He’s hesitant, as if he’s unsure if Aziraphale can be trusted. “You still love him.” 

Aziraphale swallowed, tugging at a ring around his pointer finger. It’s caught on the knuckle and won’t come off. “He Fell.”

“So?” 

“So,” Aziraphale manages to say, “he’s… he’s not loveable.” 

Nithael stares at him for a moment, studies the lines at his eyes. It’s a lie, Nithael thinks, and Aziraphale doesn’t know if he would be right. Aziraphale knows that it has been too many years (he’s been counting), he knows that Crowley can’t stand the sight of him (he’s been aching), he knows that there’s an ineffable plan that he can’t possibly understand and therefore cannot doubt, and he knows that there are things too dangerous to put into words. 

“There’s a fallen angel,” Nithael says, “in Alexandria, where Crowley is. Eyes as red as apples in the Garden of Eden. See that he’s safe. I know they’re supposed to be worthless, but-- please.” 

When he says it, Aziraphale can’t ignore the trust in his voice, the trust that is both naive and hopeless. As if Aziraphale could tell Gabriel the nuances behind these words, and it wouldn’t matter. Nithael could fall, and it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t be any more of a hell than this, whatever this is.

“I can’t go around taking care of the fallen,” Aziraphale says softly, and he has always been a coward. He can’t deny Gabriel, can’t go against the threat Gabriel didn’t bother to hide. He can’t do this for Nithael and he can’t do this for himself. Crowley has always been the brave one of the two of them. 

Nithael just nods, like he expected this. He says, “I understand,” and then disappears. It’s less glamorous than when Gabriel had done it, just a soft shimmering and a blinking of eyes, and then he’s gone. Aziraphale stares into the space where Nithael had been, unseeing, wishing for a world in which things were simple. 

He leaves for Alexandria only moments later, unfurling his wings and leaping off of his roof. The people below are tiny specks of dust on an earth that never granted miracles out of the goodness of its heart. They can’t see him, and Aziraphale doesn’t bother to smile down on them. 

He makes it to the city in record time, wings still strong even after a few years of disuse. It’s easy to find Crowley, like some part of him has always been attuned to his position, always been searching. It’s just that now, Crowley wants to be found. 

There’s a big building at the center of the city, one with sparkling rooftops and pristine white stone. It’s built similarly to a pyramid, with the same towering structure and steep stairways. Crowley sits halfway up the steps, his limbs stretched out in the sunlight. His eyes are masked with glasses similar to the ones he had been wearing a decade ago, but darker. Aziraphale doesn’t spend a lot of time with humans, but he knows that these definitely can’t be in style. They don’t look like they should have even been invented yet.

“Angel,” Crowley calls out, patting the stairs next to him. “How nice of you to come.” 

Aziraphale lands next to him, folding his wings into his back, smaller and smaller until they disappear. There’s no one around as far as Aziraphale can see-- just the two of them and heaven and hell watching from above and below. 

“Library of Alexandria,” Aziraphale says, trying to keep his voice steady. He hasn’t seen Crowley in too long, and it’s sending sparks up his veins as he moves. There are so few things that angels are supposed to hate, and Crowley is one of them. It’s preprogrammed into his muscles, but Aziraphale can’t shake the feeling of… something. 

“It’s quite beautiful,” Crowley tells him. He’s much calmer than Aziraphale is, and that brings them back to square one-- to be the one left behind is to be the only one with anything to miss. “You did a good job on it.” 

Aziraphale shrugs. “Thank you, my dear. I hear you’ve come to destroy it.” 

Crowley frowns at him. He bites his lip, and Aziraphale gets a glimpse of his tongue. It’s alien against the thin line of his mouth. “Of course not. Well. Not intentionally.” 

“Oh?” 

“Julius Caesar is on his way,” Crowley elaborated. “He might destroy it while he’s here. I should hope not. There are some rather good scrolls in there, I must say. Quite a few that are about me and mine.” 

Aziraphale swallows, crossing his arms around his chest. He knows what Crowley means, but it has never been said so plainly. It has never hit home like it does now. “Yours?”

Crowley gestures vaguely downwards. There’s a bitter edge to his voice when he speaks again. “Demons. Hell. Lucifer. Might as well get used to it, angel. That’s what I am now. That’s what I’ll always be. The past doesn’t matter.” 

“I know,” Aziraphale says. He doesn’t want to know it, or want to accept it, but if the recent lonely decade on Earth has taught him anything, it’s that what he has now is more important than anything he lost before. “We’re enemies. We’re on opposing sides. I know that now.” 

Crowley pauses, searching for something in Aziraphale’s expression that he doesn’t find. He’s not sure if this is what he wanted when he left. “Enemies.” He traces the word on his tongue, the forked edge slipping over his lips. “I suppose.”

More than ever, Aziraphale can see the differences-- that this isn’t the angel Aziraphale had known. The lips and skin and fingers may be the same, but nothing else is. There’s something more cynical, something more dangerous in the way he moves. It’s not something Aziraphale knows how to love. 

Aziraphale sits, clumsily, next to Crowley. He’s careful not to touch. Part of him wonders if it would burn, and if it did, why. Part of him doesn’t care. “I have to try and stop you. Thwart your wiles, or something.” 

“Hm.” Crowley stares up at the sky, as if straining to see heaven from the ground. “What happens if you don’t do it?” 

Aziraphale shrugs. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I’m not intent on finding out.” 

Crowley mimics his shrug. “Okay.” 

“Okay?” Aziraphale asks, frowning. He dares to glance over at Crowley, finds his shaded eyes, a smile easing at his lips. “That’s it? Okay?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says. “That’s it. I won’t stop you. Another one of the fallen, Belial, he’s here somewhere. He likes starting fires. I’d be careful around the harbor.” 

Aziraphale swallows. He wants to meet Crowley’s eyes, try to put together some semblance of his thinking, some train of thought that Aziraphale can follow. Crowley just looks away from him, and Aziraphale is more lost than he’s ever been. 

“Thank you,” he manages to say. “I’ll be careful.”


	6. Chapter 6

It goes like this: God is a metaphor for love or safety or hope or truth or control or something altogether different. 

It goes like this: another tragedy joins the stage, and God makes no appearances. 

Crowley stands outside of a church, just before the steps inside. Another inch forward and his skin would begin to burn. Whoever consecrated the ground here didn’t do a good job if he could get this close. For his purposes, though, he was grateful for some poor priest’s mistake. 

He crosses his arms across his chest, glaring at the stone walls. It’s sometime before light and after dark, when the sky is a violet shadow, clouds drifting between church steeple and rotting wood. There’s no perfect time to talk to God, he doesn’t think (would Aziraphale know?), but he finds that this time of night is easiest to disappear into. 

“I came to ask more questions,” Crowley says, looking up. Towering above him are the church walls, the stained glass windows glittering like gemstones, the steeple grasping desperately at the stars. “I got cast out of heaven for asking questions, and now that I have nothing to lose, I might as well ask some more, right?” 

There’s no answer. He wasn’t really expecting one, but it’s disappointing anyways. Somewhere, an owl asks, “Who? Who? Who?” and Crowley wishes he had the answers. 

“Your damn ineffable plan is bullshit,” Crowley says, loudly. “You play with all of us like we’re just chess pieces, but we’re not. _We’re alive.” _

It depends, he thinks, about what the definition of alive is. He doesn’t need his heart or any of the breaths he takes. Some poet once said to be alive is to think, and Crowley sure does a hell of a lot of that. 

The wind begins to pick up, a stray newspaper page drifting over the church grounds. It buries itself in a bush and stops moving as suddenly and quietly as it started. Crowley stares at it for a long moment, before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. 

“We got thrown out of heaven for asking for free will,” Crowley says. Behind his closed eyes, he can see a heaven made up of steel and white, and then glimpses of it all burning as he began an endless fall. He can see the fire, flames licking up his arms and his wings, turning the white into ash and smoke. He can see the stars, slowly blinking out above him, all breath being sucked from his lungs. 

“But down in hell we don’t get free will either,” Crowley continues. He can see, in the darkness of closed eyelids, the slime-slick walls of hell, the cramped sweat and buzz of maggots. “Kind of a shitty deal, if you ask me. Your so-called children can’t do anything without eternal damnation of one kind or another. Why’d you do that? Why couldn’t you have just been-- hell if I know, fair, maybe?” 

It feels pointless, standing outside a locked church talking to a God who hasn’t cared for him in centuries. Part of him wonders if She ever cared, or if She had always hated him, been waiting for the opportunity to punish him for something. If She was just waiting to cause him pain, She’s doing a good job of it.

He opens his eyes, staring up at the stained glass Jesus. He’s offering out a hand that no one has taken. “I saw him die,” Crowley says, voice just another howl in the wind. “You just… let him. They pushed nails through his wrists and he screamed louder than hellfire burns and you just watched. I just watched.

“What was I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?” he continues, his mouth contorting into a frown. “You made me a demon, and my only options now are to hurt people or beg your forgiveness, and I don’t really want to do either.” 

Crowley swallows, looks down. He kicks at a stray piece of gravel, stuffing his hands in his pockets. There’s a slight chill coming into the air, and he’s not sure if that’s him projecting his emotions or God rejecting him. He doesn’t know which he would prefer. 

“Why’d you leave us on our own?” Crowley asks quietly. He doesn’t know who “us” is referring to. He’s never identified with the other demons, and he’s never identified with the angels, he’s always been something “other.” He could blame God or himself and he doesn’t know which is worse. Damn free will. 

“I think I hate you,” Crowley murmurs. “I think I hate me, too. Whatever it is that you made me. Not obedient enough, not cruel enough. Undeserving. Especially of him.” 

He doesn’t know how much longer he stands there, watching the doors of the church. Time is a funny thing to immortals. A second might be an hour, an hour might be a year, a year might be a second. Even with all this time, it doesn’t make him feel any more healed. He still stands there, hands sweaty in his pockets, with no answer from God. 

After a while, having lost count of his breaths, he turns around to come face to face with Aziraphale.

“Oh,” Crowley says, voice quiet.

Aziraphale at the very least has the decency to look ashamed. They both know Crowley shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be talking like he is. If his superiors were to find out, it would get him killed. Demons don’t get audiences with God, and they’re not supposed to want them. 

Aziraphale gives a small smile that doesn’t break through the stone in Crowley’s expression. “I’m sorry, my dear, I just saw you standing here and thought you might like some company.” 

“How long have you been standing there?” 

“Just a moment,” Aziraphale says. He’s thinking he probably should have left Crowley to do this by himself, it’s just that he looked so lonely, and, well, he’s a demon at a church. Aziraphale had every right to be worried he would destroy it or something, and it was his job to make sure Crowley didn’t do anything like that, and if he gave Crowley a bit of comfort while he was at it, that wasn’t his fault. 

Crowley bites his lip. He’s not wearing his glasses for the first time in a long time, and Aziraphale can’t tear his gaze away from Crowley’s eyes. “What did you hear?” 

“Nothing important,” Aziraphale murmurs. Angels aren’t supposed to be able to sense discomfort, not like demons can, but the fear radiating off of Crowley is so strong that even Aziraphale knows not to ask. 

Crowley shrugs, as if trying to rid himself of everything he had been thinking. If he thought too hard about it, about all the secrets he just spilled, he thinks maybe Aziraphale would be able to see straight through him. He glares at Aziraphale as if daring him to say something, whether it was blackmail or a joke or something else. 

Instead, Aziraphale just bites his lip, watching Crowley closely. “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” 

“Don’t quote your boyfriend at me,” Crowley snapped, pushing past Aziraphale. “I’m leaving.”

“Wha-- what?” Aziraphale managed to splutter out. “He’s not my-- Crowley, wait!” 

Crowley doesn’t wait, just keeps walking, one foot in front of the other. He could fly away, but he doesn’t want Aziraphale to see his wings, and have another reminder that he’s a demon at a church and he could be killed for this. They’ve known each other for centuries, but that doesn’t mean they trust each other. Aziraphale has everything to gain from this, Crowley has his life to lose. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale hisses, grabbing at his arm. He misses, but his fingers scramble at skin until he’s gripping Crowley’s hand. Maybe it’s the angel and demon in them, or maybe it’s just the heat of the moment, but Aziraphale thinks he might be on fire. “Crowley, wait.” 

Crowley stops, and Aziraphale can feel the small tremble of his hand. Crowley doesn’t look back at Aziraphale, he just keeps staring straight ahead at the shadowed road. Somewhere beyond this churchyard, there’s a town and a heaven and hell, and Crowley wants nothing to do with any of it. He wants this, his hand in Aziraphale’s hand, but wanting isn’t enough to keep them safe. “What do you want?” 

“I-- I’m not going to tell anyone,” Aziraphale mutters. He swallows visibly, but doesn’t let go of Crowley. “You can trust me.” 

Crowley’s hand is trembling harder. He’s always been on guard, kept his emotions in check. Aziraphale never knew what he was thinking beyond what was said, and what was said was never more important than the next temptation. But here in this churchyard, they’ve crossed some invisible line, and they both know it. 

Crowley refuses to look at him, the weight of all the night’s deeds heavy on his shoulders. Aziraphale’s hand is warm in his, a different kind of warm than the fire he’s used to. “What happened to being enemies?”

If you name it, Aziraphale thinks, it just puts them both in more danger. “Enemies who trust each other,” he answers.

Crowley slowly pulls his hand away from Aziraphale, touching his wrist gingerly. It doesn’t hurt, but he thinks maybe he can still feel the ghost of the touch. Even that ghost might kill him. Demons aren’t supposed to know the kiss of the holy. He wants it anyways. Finally, he just whispers, “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." -- Oscar Wilde


	7. Chapter 7

It goes like this: an angel and a demon stitch up their divides, reconcile their differences. It’s something worthy of a song. 

It goes like this: they are back in a garden, where they can hide. Neither the time nor day matters, just that there is light and sun and warmth and two souls away from prying eyes. 

The sun streams through the glass roof of the greenhouse, and Crowley glances up nervously as if he’s worried that it’s heaven’s light. They stroll slowly through the stone pathways of the botanic garden, the trapped greenhouse heat warming up Crowley’s fingertips despite the bite of winter outside. 

“I like gardens,” Crowley says, breaking the silence. His words almost remind Aziraphale of a memory, one he has very carefully buried. It’s been centuries now, and it will take something more than a garden to make Aziraphale long in the same way he once had. 

“Me too,” Aziraphale says. 

They keep walking in silence, pausing every so often to talk to a flower. Crowley prefers to yell them into submission, Aziraphale prefers to whisper compliments. It’s a strange day to be a flower, showered in a combination of threats and flattery by two men who are not men at all. 

“I received a rather nice commendation last week,” Aziraphale finally says. He gestures to a bench, and Crowley settles down on it, lounging in that obscene way he does. Aziraphale joins him, shoving Crowley’s leg to the side just briefly. 

“What for?” Crowley asks, automatically moving his legs so that they rest on Aziraphale’s lap. This is comfortable, despite the bench railing digging into his back and the hard boards of the seat. 

Aziraphale shrugs, patting his ankles gently. “Apparently I inspired a kind young woman to open up an orphanage.” 

“Oh?” Crowley tenses slightly, tapping his fingers on his thigh soundlessly. “How nice of you. That’ll be good for the children.” 

Aziraphale hummed an agreement. “It’s the funniest thing, though, I can’t for the life of me remember doing it.” 

“Perhaps you did it subconsciously.” 

“Perhaps, my dear, perhaps.” 

They sit in silence for another moment, and Crowley, behind his glasses, closes his eyes. “I’ve been thinking,” he says after a moment, “about the two of us.” 

Aziraphale freezes, refusing to look over at Crowley. He keeps his gaze carefully trained on the pot of ferns in front of him, which are creeping over the edge of their pot, the browner leaves curling in on themselves.

“What about us?” he manages to ask. He wonders if the orphanage is a part of an exchange for a real conversation. Crowley works in ways that Aziraphale can’t quite grasp, and it drives him crazy to wonder. 

Crowley shrugs, moving his arms behind his head. The position is practiced, like he’s been rehearsing this conversation. “What would your side say? If they found out we were talking? Helping each other?” 

It’s not like Aziraphale hasn’t thought about it before. Gabriel and Nithael definitely both know something, even if they don’t understand how deep the cut goes. Gabriel knows they’ve spoken about things they’re not supposed to talk about, but so far, it doesn’t seem to be a particular concern. More like blackmail. As long as they aren’t friends, it seemed to be a vague threat more than reason to cast him out immediately.

Instead of saying all of that, though, Aziraphale simply shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m sure I could find an excuse.” 

“They wouldn’t… hurt you?” There’s something that trips up in Crowley’s voice when he asks this, like the thought has been haunting him. 

“No, it’s not in our nature to be evil about such things,” Aziraphale says. Of this, he is certain. Besides, he doesn’t want to worry Crowley unnecessarily. Then, not knowing if he wants the answer, he asks, “What would your side do?” 

Crowley shrugs. He shifts to a sitting position that better mimics normalcy; leans forward, elbows against his knees, hands clasped. “Kill me, I think. It’s in our nature to be evil about such things.” 

Somehow, Aziraphale is sure that this is a bite back at him, but he ignores it. “I’m sorry,” is all he says, and then, “We should stop.” 

“Nah,” Crowley tells him, before he can think about it. Even if he did think about it, the answer wouldn’t change. It’s in his nature to be reckless about such things. He’s always known there was a danger, and he’s never cared. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” 

Aziraphale nods slowly. He doesn’t want Crowley to be hurt, but he doesn’t want to be without him either. They’re enemies, he reminds himself. But it gets awfully lonely being the only immortal on Earth. There was nothing wrong with a walk in a garden (of course, that’s what Eve said as well). He has always been selfish. Sometimes, he thinks maybe he ought to have fallen, instead of Crowley. Or maybe with him. 

He shakes off the thought. “Be careful, my dear.” 

“I will be,” Crowley says. It’s almost a whisper, and Aziraphale doesn’t know how to feel about it. It doesn’t seem like a truth, but it doesn’t seem like a lie either.

“I’m grateful for it, you know,” Aziraphale says. Careful. “The help you’ve given to me. The miracles you’ve performed in my name.” 

Crowley nods. “Likewise.” 

That’s about as much as Aziraphale can bring himself to say. He’s not afraid of heaven, but he’s most certainly afraid of hell, and he’s afraid of-- no, for-- Crowley.

“Have you seen the new honey flowers they’ve got?” Crowley asks, breaking through the silence. “They’re beautiful.” 

Aziraphale looks over at him and smiles just slightly. “Show me.” 

Crowley smiles back at him, wider. He stands, offering Aziraphale a hand. He takes it, and the touch sends shivers up Crowley’s spine. It’s been centuries since Crowley has been touched so delicately, as if Aziraphale were worried about breaking him, about moving too fast. It’s refreshing to watch a small blush climb over Aziraphale’s cheeks as Crowley drops his hand and leads him towards the honey flowers.

“We first met in a garden,” Aziraphale says (he ignores all the times before that, and Crowley is endlessly grateful for it). “I thought you made for a very nice snake.”

Crowley snorts. His eyes are covered, and for the first time, he’s wondering if they have to be. “Thanks, angel.” 

“Of course,” Aziraphale continues, “there was the whole business with the Original Sin, but, well…” 

“I was just following my orders,” Crowley says. Aziraphale swings his arms as he walks, and Crowley resists the urge to reach out and hold his hand still between his own fingers. “Unlike you, I might add.” 

“I was following orders!” Aziraphale gives him a reproachful glance, but there’s a smile under it. Crowley has learned, by now, how to see underneath these masks Aziraphale sets up, how to tell what he’s really thinking even when he’s trying to act holy. 

“You gave your flaming sword away to Adam and Eve,” Crowley reminded him. There’s a smile under his words too. It’s his first memory of Aziraphale, the one which proved there might be something different about this angel, something that Crowley can learn to love. Where the other angels he’d met were hard edged and reproachful of humans, otherworldly with an ego complex, Aziraphale just wanted to help. That was something new in this new world, and it was his first taste of the ethereal’s humanity. 

Aziraphale sighs. There’s not an inch of regret in it, and Crowley loves it. “They just looked so helpless, Crowley.” 

“Tell me, did Gabriel ever find out about that?” 

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale says, sighing again. “He sent me a very strongly worded note. It came on the most beautiful piece of parchment.” 

Crowley laughs, a rare occasion, and Aziraphale finds himself beaming in the sound. “The worst punishment,” Crowley says, grinning, “a memo.” 

“It was quite upsetting,” Aziraphale says. He knows there are worse things, he knows that intimately, but it’s making Crowley smile, and so he doesn’t mind the hyperbole.

Crowley leads them around a bend (that’s how they’ve always been, Crowley leading and Aziraphale pretending he doesn’t want to follow), before stopping in front of a row of pots holding dully colored shrubs that seem to be wilting slightly. 

Aziraphale studies them, the sharp edges of the green leaves, the hints of red on the buds. He doesn’t know what he was expecting-- something yellow, perhaps? 

“In Afrikaans, it’s called the herb-touch-me-not,” Crowley says. He smiles slightly, like this is all some kind of cosmic joke. It’s not, but Aziraphale doesn’t know that (there’s so much he doesn’t know, so much Crowley can’t bring himself to say). “Because it smells so terrible if you damage it.” 

Aziraphale raises his eyebrows, staring dubiously at Crowley. “Oh?” 

“Best not to get too close,” Crowley says. “I don’t think this is the flower Victorians realized they were referring to in their flower language. They might’ve been thinking of something yellow.” 

“You know Victorian flower language?” 

“You don’t?” 

Aziraphale shrugs, turning away from Crowley. “I was a bit distracted during the Victorian era. I helped invent the furnace. Quite helpful stuff, you know. Oh, and Big Ben.”

“I don’t remember most of that century,” Crowley says, not really thinking about it. “I think I was in America. Possibly I was sleeping.” 

He turns to Aziraphale (he’s always watching when Aziraphale isn’t paying attention), studying the laughter lines at his eyes. He’s studying the flower intently, as if trying to decipher it’s secrets, the words it would have said in a bouquet during the 19th century. A smile is dancing at his lips. 

“What does it mean?” Aziraphale asks. He glances up at Crowley. “The flower?” 

There’s a thin line between what Crowley supposed to be, what he is, and what he wants to be. He’s supposed to be a demon incapable of love. But on the other hand, he’s in love with Aziraphale, and he wants to be loved back. It’s a paradoxical kind of condition, one that Crowley doesn’t know how to survive. The flower means a sweet, secret love. 

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing important, angel.”


	8. Chapter 8

It goes like this: love is about giving and taking, and sometimes sacrifice is about giving too. Evil will take any excuse to be good. 

It goes like this: there are people in need, and there are people who will help.

“I just think the idea is ridiculous,” Crowley says, “that commiting murder gives you some heavenly crisis and makes you realize that you’re just a speck on the ground.” 

Aziraphale shrugs, pouring another glass of wine. They’re in his bookshop, sharing drinks over a coffee table stained with cup rings. He could miracle them away, but he rather likes the unkempt look. Crowley has Crime and Punishment in one hand, and a wine glass in the other, and he’s waving both around without a care. 

“He’s one of the most sinful characters in literature,” Crowley continues. “Pride, lust, laziness, murder, the whole works. He’s not just going to experience divine intervention.” 

He’s been ranting for the better part of three hours, and Aziraphale is starting to regret making him read it. “Some people do experience enlightenment, you know,” he says, taking a sip of his drink. It’s not one of his favorite wines, but Crowley seems to be enjoying it. 

“Yes, sure,” Crowley says, waving his glass dangerously. A drop sloshes over the side. “But the book would have been legions better if he hadn’t discovered God.” 

“You shouldn’t say things like that, my dear. She could be listening.” 

“And you shouldn’t call me your dear when I’m being blasphemous,” Crowley bites back, “but you’re still doing that.” 

Aziraphale frowns. “Oh, I suppose you’re right, but still.” 

Crowley was about to make another scandalous remark that would probably have Aziraphale taking a long drink, but before he can, there’s a pounding at the door. 

“Did you hear that?” Aziraphale asks, glancing towards the door. There are three bookshelves between the two of them and whoever is waiting there, but he glares at the space the door would be anyways. 

“There’s someone at the door,” Crowley says helpfully. He takes a long sip of the wine, putting the book down. The pages are dogeared and Aziraphale resists the urge to miracle them straight again. 

“But we’re closed,” Azirpaphle says, then, louder, “We’re closed!” 

The pounding starts again. “Mr. Fell, please!” 

Aziraphale stands, sighing. “Better sober up, my dear. Drunk is not a responsible look these days.” 

“Whatever,” Crowley mutters. He sobers up anyways, and a wave of numbness disappears from his skin. He shakes it off, giving a withering stare at the now full bottles of wine on the table. At the front door, he can hear someone begging Aziraphale for something. 

“Please, Mr. Fell,” she whispers, voice ragged and tired. “They say you’re the one to go to, the one who can cure it-- ”

Crowley sucks in a breath. Of course Aziraphale would-- he stalks over to the front door, where he finds a young woman clad in a nightdress, her arms gripping a child tightly against her waist. “Please tell me you’re not bringing someone with tuberculosis in here,” he hisses. 

Aziraphale turns, sighing. “It won’t hurt you, Crowley.” 

“That’s not the point.” Crowley turns to the woman, ready to tell her off, everyone dies eventually, but the child in her arms is crying quietly and he can’t bring himself to do it. Bitterly, he mutters, “Fine.” 

Aziraphale smiles at him, and that makes it worth it. He beckons the woman in, closing the door behind her with a soft click. Aziraphale takes the child from her arms gingerly, tucking her tight against his waist. In the soft lighting of the bookstore, he looks exhausted. Sometimes, Crowley thought, the weight of millennia falls on your shoulders a little harder-- all the suffering they had seen, all the violence and death, all of the pain that never stops. 

Crowley follows as Aziraphale brings the child to the back, laying her down on the couch. She’s young, a handkerchief pressed against her lips which she coughs into every few moments. A bloodstain soaks through the white cloth, staining her fingertips. She curls herself into a fetal position, and something that Crowley refuses to call empathy tugs at his heartstrings. 

“What’s your name?” Aziraphale asks, sitting the woman down on the armchair chair across from the couch. The wine they had been drinking from has subtly been turned to a tea kettle. 

“Dolores,” the woman says, voice cracking. “That’s my sister, Donna.” 

Crowley sighs, silently cursing Aziraphale, and kneels next to Donna. Pressing the back of his hand to her forehead, he finds the 100 degree fever he had been expecting. She shivers at his touch, and he takes his hand away. She’s going to die soon, he can tell. There’s a certain smell in the air, a certain bitter cold that hangs around her like a fog. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley murmurs, “may I speak with you?” 

Aziraphale glances between him and Donna, before excusing himself politely and leading Crowley several bookshelves away. “I have to help her, Crowley-- ”

“Have you been curing tuberculosis?” Crowley breaks in. 

Aziraphale hesitates only a moment. “Just a few times. Once or twice. Maybe a dozen or so times.” 

“Oh Go-- Sata-- someone,” Crowley mutters. “You know you can’t save all of them.” 

“I can save some of them,” Aziraphale says insistently. “That counts for more than nothing.” 

This, this stupid stubbornness to do not what is right but what is good is what Crowley has always loved most about Aziraphale. He’s always had a need to fix things. He’ll do everything he can to save someone who needs saving, sometimes the hard way and sometimes the holy way. But on the other hand, Crowley knows, even if Aziraphale doesn’t realize it, helping isn’t what heaven cares about most. 

“Heaven can’t be happy about you bringing everyone back from the brink of death,” Crowley tells him. His words are as soft as candlelight, but they burn just as well. 

Aziraphale shrugs. “I’m helping the innocent. They can’t hold that against me. Even if…” 

“Even if what, angel?” 

“Gabriel might have told me off a bit the last time,” Aziraphale mutters. “He said something about punishing me somehow if I do it again. I just… I can’t leave them to die.” 

There are several things that Crowley knows for sure. First, Aziraphale will absolutely risk punishment if it means helping this girl. Second, Crowley would do anything for him, whether that was blowing up a church in Germany or blessing Shakespeare’s Hamlet or driving slowly in his car or taking punishment for him. Third, Crowley can’t let Aziraphale be hurt. It’s something written into his being, burnt there in the same way his intrinsic hellishness is there. 

“I’ll do it,” Crowley says.

Aziraphale stares at him. “You’ll do what?” 

“Heal the girl,” Crowley says, trying not to regret it. “You don’t get in trouble, the girl gets saved, I… thwart heaven’s willingness to let people die.” 

Aziraphale stares at him for a long moment. He searches the grim smile at his lips, the lines at his cheekbones, the shadow of his glasses over his eyes. He can’t find an answer, a reason for Crowley to help when he has no motivation to. “Crowley…” 

“You owe me,” Crowley tells him. “Come on. Make some tea or something.” 

“You really are quite n-- ”

“Tell the whole blessed world, why don’t you?” 

Aziraphale smiles wryly. “I’d love to, my dear.” 

“Shut up,” Crowley mutters. He turns away from Aziraphale, cheeks burning. He walks back to Dolores and Donna without looking back at him. He thinks possibly if he looks back, his cheeks will burn harder and he’ll have to run away to spare the embarrassment. 

Dolores looks up at him hopefully, and Crowley sighs, already regretting this. She’s wringing her torn-up coat between her hands, and he can see her bitten down nails underneath her fingerless gloves. 

Crowley exhales again, kneeling at Donna’s side. She opens her eyes, and the rich brown is blurred by tears. A line of dried blood drips from the corner of her lips to her chin. The consumption has whittled her cheeks to bone. She stares at him for a long moment, and he can feel her fear. She’s afraid of death (who wouldn’t be?). 

“Am I going to die?” she asks in the smallest voice. 

Crowley shakes his head. “Not today.” 

He presses his hand to her shoulder, moves it to the back of her neck. With an agonizing languidness, he pulls his hand away like he’s drawing flame from smoke. A dark ribbon of shadow comes with his hand, dancing from his fingertips to Donna’s skin. When all of it has been extracted from her, Crowley gathers the smoke in the palm of his hand and crushes it. With a small hiss, it dissipates. 

Donna coughs one more time, a ragged and threadbare noise, and then she closes her eyes. Her breathing evens out, and Crowley knows if he were to touch her, her fever would have faded away. 

Without looking back at Aziraphale or Dolores, Crowley says, “She’ll be okay,” and then in a mutter meant just for Aziraphale, “I have to go do something evil now.” 

Aziraphale smiles at him as he turns around. He can’t say it, but Crowley has a good inside him that other demons don’t have. He just can’t figure out what the pattern of use is. “Thank you, my dear.” 

“Thank you,” Dolores whispers, moving to her sister’s side. Donna is sleeping soundly, and Dolores squeezes her hand. “Thank you.” 

Crowley waves a hand. “I’ll be out on the streets wrecking mayhem if you need me.” 

“There’s a businessman down at that bakery I like,” Aziraphale says in a strained voice. “Fallen on hard times. I’m sure he could be convinced to steal something.” 

“Thanks for the tip, angel,” Crowley tells him, trying not to smile. There it is again-- the painful need to help those who could use it. Crowley could bask in those words, the way Aziraphale is sacrificing his own holiness to help Crowley in return. Not for the Agreement, but just because he wants to. 

It’s indisputable that there’s hellfire running in Crowley’s veins, but he thinks Aziraphale has some too, even if he’ll never admit it. Crowley tightens his jaw at the thought that maybe it’s because of him.


	9. Chapter 9

It goes like this: two souls begin to see each other as they are and as they feel, where sight might as well be acceptance might as well be its own kind of love. 

“We do an unhealthy amount of drinking, I think,” Aziraphale says, leaning back in his chair. It isn’t often that he gives up on his posture like this, lounging in the arm chair. 

Crowley shrugs. His cup of vodka is cold in his hand, and he takes a long drink. “We’re not human, it won’t hurt us.” 

“I suppose,” Aziraphale says. He takes a sip of his own drink, eyes fixated on Crowley. “Why do you wear your glasses all the time?” 

Crowley looks away from him, staring down the rows of unsold books. He’s not drunk enough to talk about this. “Just a tad too snake-like for the human gaze.” 

“Can’t you just put a glamour on them? Make them look human?” Aziraphale asks. In the beginning, he remembers, Crowley didn’t cover up his eyes. He stood on the wall, wings unfurled and eyes wide, and Aziraphale couldn’t tear his gaze away from him. 

“It’s the only thing I can’t change,” Crowley confesses. He licks his lips slowly, still not looking at Aziraphale. “It makes people more comfortable to cover them up.” 

“You care about making people comfortable?” 

Crowley’s eyes are covered, but Aziraphale can feel the heat of the glare on his skin. He looks away, finding the same spot on the wall that Crowley goes back to staring at. There are three sketches there, a triptych of heaven and hell. It’s been one of the final few drafts of “The Last Judgement,” one that Aziraphale thinks had been… a good effort. Hieronoymus Bosch certainly had quite the imagination. 

Crowley nods at the painting. “Why do you have that? It’s not very… angelic.” 

“Well he worked so hard on it,” Aziraphale says, frowning. “It encouraged him that anyone would buy it.” 

It’s such a ridiculous thing for an angel to do that only Aziraphale could have done it. Neither angels nor demons particularly liked it when their depictions looked wrong. But Aziraphale, with his misprinted Bibles and his books of inaccurate prophecies, doesn’t mind. 

“You bought an inaccurate painting of hell just to encourage someone?” 

Aziraphale shrugs as Crowley focuses in on him. The tinted glasses are low on the bridge of his nose, but his eyes are still hidden and unreadable. Where other people might have felt interrogated, Aziraphale has never felt threatened by him. Maybe it’s the confessions he’s heard late at night, or maybe it’s the fact that he refuses to hurt children, or maybe it’s the smile that looks so bright on his lips. Somehow, Aziraphale doesn’t falter. 

“You wear tinted glasses just to make some people comfortable?” 

Crowley tears his eyes away from Aziraphale, and takes a long drink. The vodka burns as it runs down his throat, and it’s a welcome fire. His skin itches as Aziraphale watches him, and Crowley can’t bring himself to look back. 

“Not some people,” Crowley mutters. “One person.” 

He stares for a long moment into his empty cup. The ice cubes are reflected in the glasses like irises, and Aziraphale resists the urge to reach over and tear them off his face, press his palm to Crowley’s cheek and look at his eyes for the first time in centuries. Instead of doing that, Aziraphale just frowns again. “Who?” 

Crowley takes a breath, setting the glass down on the coffee table. His fingerprints are left behind in the condensation, and he glares until the precipitation slowly drips over and covers them. He can feel Aziraphale watching him curiously, his own drink growing old in his hand. Years pass, maybe. He says, “You. It’s you.” 

“Me?” 

“Of course you,” Crowley says, finally looking up. He pushes the glasses higher up his nose and Aziraphale wishes, not for the first time, he could hear what Crowley is thinking. “It makes you uncomfortable that I’m a demon. I thought I’d take away the reminder.” He swallows, taking a breath of cold air that he doesn’t need, but wants in the same way humans do. “I see the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.” 

“I-- ”

“Before you say anything, it’s okay,” Crowley breaks in. “I don’t mind wearing them. Just thought I’d do you a-- a favor. It’s easier to forget I’m untrustworthy this way.” 

“Crowley.” Aziraphale sets down his drink, a small thump against the oak table. He goes slowly as he stands up and moves over to sit next to Crowley, the couch cushions dipping under his weight. It’s hesitant, like he might regret it at any moment. Crowley stares, lips slightly parted, nervous in the way that only Aziraphale can make him feel. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale says softly. It’s just a breath, an exhale, a whisper. “I don’t think you’re untrustworthy.” 

Crowley swallows, mouth suddenly dried out. “No?” 

“No,” Aziraphale says. He reaches up, taking the glasses in his hands. Gradually, he pulls them off, giving Crowley time and chance to stop him. He folds the glasses up, looking down as he puts them on the coffee table. When he looks up, Crowley is watching him. 

His eyes are a bright yellow, something like staring directly into the sun might be, if it didn’t burn you first (Aziraphale is burning). Crowley stares, unblinking, waiting for Aziraphale to say something, do anything-- put the glasses back on, laugh at him, cry, draw back. 

But Aziraphale just inhales sharply, not breaking his gaze. He grips his own knee tightly with one hand, as if to steady himself. With the other, he reaches up, tenderly cupping Crowley’s cheek in his palm. His skin is warm, reddening under Aziraphale’s touch, as if he had been waiting for just this moment and is now thrilled to ignite. 

“You’re lovely, my dear,” Aziraphale tells him, and he believes it honestly, with all his heart. “Eyes and tongue and all.” 

“I’m a demon,” Crowley reminds him, voice dark. Despite the bitterness in his words, he reaches up, putting his hand over Aziraphale’s hand as if to keep it pressed against his cheek. Crowley takes a deep breath, the warmth of Aziraphale’s skin now smoldering everywhere. If Crowley were a witch at stake, Aziraphale’s love would be the fire and brimstone. 

Aziraphale smiles at him, and hopes that it’s enough (it is). “You don’t need to hide that from me.” 

“Okay,” Crowley says slowly. He wants to nod, but he’s afraid that if he moves, Aziraphale will take his hand away and they won’t be touching anymore. Every part of him is aflame. An angel’s touch should be poison to a demon, but somehow this felt like healing. 

For a moment, they just stay there, staring at each other. It’s a kind of vulnerability, Crowley knows, to meet someone’s eyes and let them see your secrets. For millennia, Crowley has been willing to give Aziraphale everything-- his life, his sins, his virtues. 

But now, he’s giving the thing Aziraphale is asking for: himself, as he is, demon and evil and kind all at once. Crowley doesn’t know if Aziraphale will accept, but he’ll give it all anyways. Eyes wide open. 

There’s the other thing-- it takes a certain amount of bravery, an amount that can’t be put into words, in order to accept love. It takes even more courage to accept love from someone you’re supposed to hate. 

To be an angel is to serve God, to work to spread kindness in the world. There’s a fine line that Aziraphale walks now, between loving Crowley and doing what he was created to do. He has a role, he knows, in the ineffable plan, and according to everyone, that role doesn’t include this. Loving Crowley is a selfish thing, and greed is a sin. 

Crowley inhales. Exhales. Aziraphale can feel the breath on his lips. He pulls back, slowly. Crowley doesn’t stop him.


	10. Chapter 10

It goes like this: sometimes touch can say what words cannot, sometimes the dark can show what the light hides away.

It goes like this: things that are forbidden in the light, forbidden to name, forbidden to ask for, are sometimes the things you most need in the dark. 

Time passes. It always does. Sometimes it’s a matter of weeks, or years, or decades between Aziraphale and Crowley’s meetings. It’s a precaution, a matter of their safety, Aziraphale knows, but that doesn’t keep him from being any less lonely. 

He runs the bookshop, selling no books. He tries each new café and restaurant that opens in England, finding his favorites. He has a list of the best places to eat, mostly ranked by best ambiance (he wants to take Crowley to all of them, knows that even if he doesn’t appreciate the food, he would like comfortable seats and warm lighting). He reads almost every notable book that gets published over the years they’re apart. But the best days are the ones that Crowley joins him. 

It’s hopeless, really, that he’s an angel and the best days of his eternal life are the ones he spends with a demon. But Crowley has an edge to him that gives Aziraphale a rush of adrenaline. He’s not one to rebel, he has too much faith in his side for that, but there’s a thrill that comes from being with Crowley that he doesn’t know where else to find. 

Nevertheless, Aziraphale looks forward to each meeting, even if he doesn’t plan on ever saying that outloud. They may have gotten away with it so far, but that didn’t mean there was any less danger of meeting. 

Crowley, though, takes it upon himself to be the one to reach out to Aziraphale every time, silently relishing the small smile Aziraphale will give him when he consents to whatever adventures they want to explore that day. There’s a hunger in his mouth when Crowley smiles back, as if he’s aching for another touch, another whisper, another declaration, one that he thinks he’s never going to receive again. 

He’s dressed up for the occasion when Aziraphale sees him next, leaning against the doorway of the bookshop. He smiles, taking off the sunglasses when Aziraphale comes out. His eyes look more golden than ever in the sunlight, and Aziraphale tries only slightly to suppress his smile when Crowley offers to take him out. 

His smile is at an angle, eyes bright and daring. “Can I tempt you to a movie night, angel?” 

“We shouldn’t,” Aziraphale says, hoping Crowley will insist anyways. 

Crowley smiles again, the only tell to his anxiety being the quick tapping on the lenses of his glasses. “Doesn’t mean we can’t.” 

“I suppose that’s true,” Aziraphale says. His jacket is already in his hands, and the door is already locked. “What are we seeing?” 

“What people are calling a horror movie,” Crowley tells him, pushing his hands in his pockets. It’s one of those fall days that has a bitter bite to the air, cold enough to send a chill over blushing cheeks. “I’m a demon, you like movies. Everybody wins.” 

Aziraphale laughs lightly. “Sounds lovely. I really am glad humans invented the camera-- and the way that they build the sets with the multilayers, and the costumes, and-- ”

“Nerd,” Crowley says, but fondly. 

The walk to the movie theatre was short, Aziraphale explaining the entire process of making a moving picture. Crowley didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation, but he enjoyed the sound of Aziraphale’s voice, his thoughts on everything he considers important. 

They buy their tickets with miracle-made money, and Crowley doesn’t feel a hint of shame about it. Aziraphale chooses seats at the back, where no one can see them-- the man with a faint glow around his shoulders and the one dressed in enough black to almost blend in with the shadows. 

It’s easiest to watch horror movies in the dark, Crowley thinks, because no one can see your face. This small theatre is particularly dark as soon as the lights go down and the movie rolls.

Aziraphale sits next to him, close enough that Crowley can feel his body heat. Crowley’s arms are carefully positioned in the same way they have been for the last thousand years-- close enough to feel but not touch. He’s warm in the way that Crowley has never felt, in a way that Crowley wants desperately to have and to hold. 

Aziraphale doesn’t seem to notice him, fully entertained by the movie. He sits up straight as ever, a bag of popcorn in his lap. Crowley reaches over to take a handful of popcorn, despite his distaste for both food and the sinful amount of butter Aziraphale put in it. 

Aziraphale glances at him, studying the pale goosebumps the run over the backs of his hands, the tightness of his jaw. 

Crowley could collapse under Aziraphale’s gaze, the powers that be know how many times before that he’s crumpled under Aziraphale’s smile. Words are a wonderful thing, Crowley thinks, but they make some feelings too real and whole. Some things are better left unsaid, even if just for his own pride. 

Aziraphale knows him, though, in a way that words don’t cover. He shifts, nonchalant and ever so subtle, eyes trained on the screen. Crowley inhales sharply, just a breath under the noise of the movie, as Aziraphale leans against him, pressing himself into Crowley’s side. The seat arm between them disappears. There’s an uncurrent of fear running through Crowley’s spine as he moves his arm around Aziraphale, wrapping it around his shoulders. He doesn’t know if the fear is from the movie or the danger this one movement brings. 

But his arm fits in the same way that he always dreamed it would-- Aziraphale soft under Crowley’s edges, his arm just long enough to wrap around his body and hold him close, Aziraphale’s chest rising and falling with even breaths, the two of them in the same dance they’d always been in, but this time holding each other. 

They don’t say anything. Part of Crowley wonders if Aziraphale is feeling the same thing he is, the same energy running up his veins and down his arteries and shocking this human body alive. He wonders if Aziraphale is just as distracted as his, concentrating not on the movie but on the places their skin touches. Aziraphale rests his head on Crowley’s shoulder, and a whisper runs through his mind that, yes, they are together on this. One mind sharing many lifetime’s worth of love suppressed by fear. 

But he’s not as afraid anymore, not when he gets to hold Aziraphale like this. The whole world seems to pause for them-- they’re just two people in the back of a movie theatre, curled around each other, heaven and hell be damned. 

As the movie goes on, Aziraphale would need several hands to count the times Crowley near-screams, and several more to count the minutes Crowley’s hand spends gripping Aziraphale’s shoulder like a life saver, but he doesn’t comment. 

The movie ends, and they’re still curled up against each other. Crowley can count each beat of Aziraphale’s heart. It’s a privilege, he thinks, to be this close. He knows he’ll have to let go eventually, but he doesn’t want to. Aziraphale has set him on fire in every way in the past, and here, Crowley is what’s left of the embers, every piece of him alive and warm and wrapped in love. 

They could move. Crowley knows they could, knows that they probably should. This is a line that they haven’t crossed before, this touching and not flinching. But it’s a line he’s wanted to cross for centuries. 

The lights of the theatre come up, though, and Aziraphale pulls away, taking a long look at Crowley. A smile traces his lips. “You were absolutely terrified.” 

Crowley glares at him. His arm is still around Aziraphale’s shoulder, and he knows he should move, but no one is watching them. “I wasn’t scared at all.” 

“You almost screamed several more times than I did,” Aziraphale points out. “I think we should avoid horror movies in the future, my dear, I can tell you hated that.” 

“I’m a demon,” Crowley says, finally pulling away. “I don’t get scared.” 

“Just like you aren’t kind,” Aziraphale says, nudging his shoulder. The seat arm appears again, the cup holder slightly smaller than it had been before. “Nothing to be ashamed of.” 

“I am a demon,” Crowley emphasizes, loud enough that it resounds through the theatre like an empty promise. He stands, offering Aziraphale a hand up. He takes it, the touch electric. As they walk out of the aisle and into the lobby of the theatre, Aziraphale doesn’t pull his hand away, keeping the two of them close. 

John of Damascus once said that an angel is a reflection of light, and that’s almost how this feels, Crowley thinks-- holding Aziraphale’s hand is like holding light itself, its warmth and glow slipping over his palm and staying there. _Don’t let me go,_ Crowley pleads silently. _Hold onto me._


	11. Chapter 11

It goes like this: being an angel is to believe in God’s unconditional love. Being fallen is to reject that love. Being human is to have a choice. It’s a suppositional thing. 

It’s the middle of the night when Nithael comes to the bookshop. He touches the lock with two fingers, smiling wryly at the soft click that comes when it unlocks. He pushes the door open, silencing the little bell that’s supposed to ring out when someone comes in so that Aziraphale can usher them out.

He walks forwards without a sound, making his way through the labyrinth of bookshelves. He runs a finger across the spines of the books, pulling off a faint layer of dust on the novels Aziraphale doesn’t have as much interest in. 

Upstairs, he can hear voices-- one with a slight drawl to his accent, one with a posh slight to it. Some orchestra plays just underneath the sound of conversation, just quiet enough for them to hear each other speak, but loud enough Nithael has to strain to hear anything. 

“I just think,” the first says, “there’s value in television. All that time watching nonsense, it does wonders for the mind.”

“You’re only saying that because it got you a commenda-- did you hear that?” 

Nithael curses silently, realizing he has stepping on a creaky floorboard. He can feel the dip in the floor now that he thinks about it, and he freezes. 

“There’s someone here,” the darker voice says, a warning in his words.

The second voice responds in a hurried tone, with the backdrop of a set of china being put away. “Hide.” 

The first person doesn’t argue, and Nithael doesn’t hear another sound coming from him. Nithael, suddenly with a dark sense of foreboding, finds the oak wood stairs and starts to climb. Swallowing, he calls out Aziraphale’s name. 

Something upstairs crashes, and Nithael hurries his ascent. “Aziraphale?” he asks again. 

Upstairs, the softly lit room seems to glow at his presence. There’s a faint indent on the couch, and at the desk, Aziraphale turns with a rush to look at him. Relief washes over his face as Nithael comes into focus. 

“Hello,” he says, a small catch to his voice. “How are you, Nithael?” 

“I’m alright, thank you,” Nithael says, studying the room. Two candles flicker at the desk, a hot cup of tea blurred by steam sitting on a pile of papers. There’s no sign of another person, but Nithael wasn’t really expecting one. “I was given a short assignment here, and I thought I’d drop in to say hello.” 

Aziraphale smiles at him. It’s a warm gesture, as it always is, but there’s still a nervousness in his eyes. “Well it’s nice to see you. How are you?” 

“You already asked that.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale stammers out. “How silly of me. Would you like some tea?” 

Nithael waves a hand. “I don’t see why you spend so much time indulging in human things like tea.” 

“Well it’s quite calming,” Aziraphale says. “Please, sit.” 

Nithael makes his way to the couch apprehensively, folding his arms over his crossed knees as he sits. At the coffee table, sunglasses sit at the corner, as if they had been forgotten in a rush. He picks them up, eyes flickering between them and Aziraphale. “What are these?”

Aziraphale tenses, his knuckles going white around the teacup he was holding. “Sunglasses. Humans like to wear them when it’s too bright outside.” 

Nithael hums an acknowledgement. He doesn’t know much about human customs, or Aziraphale’s strange habits, but he’s fairly sure Aziraphale hadn’t ever worn these. They don’t smell loved in the same way that everything else in the bookshop did. 

“Human clothes are quite interesting,” Aziraphale says, as if grasping for any kind of conversation. “Sometimes, to seem cool, they wear sunglasses even when they’re inside and it’s not too bright.” 

Nithael raises an eyebrow. “Fascinating.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale says. The conversation sputters out, and he resists the urge to try to push Nithael out of the bookshop, by force if necessary. He’s about to ask how Nithael is, but catches himself before he says it for a third time. 

“Aziraphale,” Nithael says, slow, as if he doesn’t want to say anything. “The assignment I was given down here…” 

Aziraphale takes a sip of his tea. This was work talk, something he could manage. “What was it?” 

“I-- I lied,” Nithael says quietly. “There’s no assignment.” 

Aziraphale frowns, setting down his teacup. He leans backward slightly, reluctance flashing over his face. “Why are you here then?” 

Nithael doesn’t answer right away. His eyes wander around the room, from the desk to the paintings to the pile of books about witchcraft to the buttons on Aziraphale’s clothes to his own skin. The inside of his hands are a pink compared to his dark skin, and he digs his nails into the heel of his palm as if to wake himself from a dream. 

“Nithael?” Aziraphale prompts, voice hesitant. He’s been trained to sense positive emotions, but he can’t find a single one radiating off of Nithael and his bitten lips. 

“I think I’m going to Fall,” Nithael murmurs. His eyes are cast down, burning holes into his knees. He doesn’t blink, eyes burning. 

Aziraphale stares at him. “What?” 

“Don’t make me say it again.” Nithael looks up, eyes wide. There’s a red tint to the brown that Aziraphale has never noticed before (he wonders if it’s new). “I think-- I just-- Zira, don’t you ever just stop and think… I don’t want to do this anymore.” 

Aziraphale swallowed, eyes wide. His mind flashes to Crowley, standing at the steps of a church, praying. Crowley, with him in St. James Park, saying, I think maybe we’re just players who’ve bet everything on a losing game. Lucifer, asking for free will, the smoke of his wings as he fell from heaven, the ragged screams torn from his throat as the fire consumed him. Crowley, asking for holy water. 

“No,” Aziraphale says. He doesn’t know if it’s a lie. 

Nithael swallows visibly, eyes flickering to the sunglasses and the cup of tea Aziraphale is holding. “I just-- God is so secretive and incomprehensible, how are we supposed to understand what She wants?” 

“We’re not,” Aziraphale says, inhaling sharply. “Are you doubting Her plan?” 

Nithael’s face crumples. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just-- how are we supposed to follow a plan if we don’t even know what it is?” 

“By having faith in it,” Aziraphale tells him. His palms are sweating, fingers grasping at his knees as if the touch will keep him stable. 

Nithael shrugs helplessly. “I don’t-- I don’t know how to do that.” 

“May you be forgiven,” Aziraphale whispers. 

Nithael closes his eyes, shoulders sinking. “I thought you might understand.” 

He wants to understand, wants to help Nithael. He wants to tell Nithael that it’s okay to have doubts, that even if he doesn’t know the plan, it must still work out somehow, he wants to explain that there are things out of their control and it’s okay to just accept that-- then he realizes those are all things Crowley has told him. 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale says quietly. “I don’t think I can.” 

Nithael takes a deep breath, but it’s a ragged struggle. “I just-- we could be doing so much good, healing sickness and fixing homelessness or whatever, but Gabriel says it’s not in the plan, and that’s just supposed to be reason enough. Don’t you ever just-- feel like you can do it better?” 

“Better than God?”

Nithael doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to. Aziraphale knows what he’s thinking, even if he doesn’t agree. The thing about faith is that the only reason to have any is when it’s tested. But sometimes, if you can’t pass the test, there’s no point at all. Aziraphale has always had faith in things, despite the occasional unauthorized use of his powers. He believes in forgiveness, in understanding, if not from Gabriel, then from the ones who actually matter. 

Nithael, the other fallen, they don’t believe in forgiveness. They don’t need to-- they have other motivations to do their work in the world. Nithael, to fix things. Lucifer, to get revenge. Crowley… Aziraphale didn’t know what Crowley’s motivations were, but they certainly weren’t out of hope for God’s love. 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Aziraphale says quietly. “Do you believe in God’s unequivocal love?” 

Nithael stared at him for a long moment. He took a long, certain breath. Then, “No. No I don’t.” 

Nithael leaves only a few moments later, with no further words and Aziraphale watching him nervously as the lock clicks shut. Gabriel would burn him if he knew the conversation they had, the ideas they put into words when they’re supposed to be kept less than quiet. 

Crowley comes out from the bedroom, eyes wide. Anxiety is written across the lines at his eyes and the tight set of his mouth. He stares at Aziraphale for a long moment, and Aziraphale stares back, and neither know what to say. 

“Oh,” Crowley says slowly. “What-- ”

Aziraphale shakes his head just slightly, throat closing up as he speaks. “Am I going to Fall?” 

Crowley watches him. If anything, Aziraphale is more anxious than he is. “Why would you?” 

“Nithael is going to,” Aziraphale says softly. “I-- he’s always been the most like me.” 

Crowley steps farther forward, hesitating only a moment before reaching out. He reaches over, taking Azirphale’s hands. His palms are warm, some kind of longing flooding through him. “You’re good, angel, you’re not going to Fall. You’re the kind of angel that God can’t say no to.” 

“Nithael is good too,” Aziraphale murmurs. He glances down, staring at their clasped hands. In a whisper, he says, “You were good.” 

Crowley tenses, but doesn’t pull away. Their hands stay together, grasping for some kind of stability. These are old scars, scabbed over only by time. But Aziraphale’s hands are soft, forgiving where Crowley’s knuckles are stiff. Aziraphale is all kindness where Crowley is hungry. Crowley follows Azirphale’s gaze, watching their hands, almost afraid to speak. He does it anyways. 

“It’s not about being good, I don’t think,” Crowley says quietly. “It’s about having faith in the plan. Good vs. evil. It’s about knowing which side will win. You have faith in God’s innate goodness. I believe in…” 

He hesitates for a moment. He doesn’t know what he believes in, and what little he knows isn’t safe to say. Not with the walls and their ears. He says it anyways (something about holding Aziraphale’s hands makes him brave). “I believe in being on my own side, apart from the ineffable plan. I work for hell, but maybe the plan doesn’t care who I work for or why I do it.” 

Our own side, he wants to say. He wants to say that whatever happens, if Aziraphale falls, if Crowley rises, he wants to say that it’s going to be the two of them despite all that. He wants to say it doesn’t matter, but he knows it does. Crowley can claim to be a third party in God’s chess game, but he still doesn’t know the rules to the competition. 

Aziraphale draws circles over the back of Crowley’s hand with his thumb, watching as the skin pales with pressure. “I just want to do good things for people. That must be in the plan.” 

“Or maybe there’s no plan at all. Maybe God is just playing with us, making things up as She goes.” 

Aziraphale flinches, as if this small act of doubt hurts him. “That can’t be it. There must be a plan.” 

“And that’s why you’re not going to fall,” Crowley says softly, squeezing Aziraphale’s hands. “Besides, even if you did fall, I’d still-- ” Love you, he wants to say. He can’t. “Be your friend. I’d keep you safe from heaven and hell.” 

“Could I join your side?” Aziraphale asks. It’s a small act of bravery for him, daring to ask about sides that he doesn’t believe exists. 

It would be another act of bravery for Crowley to say that Aziraphale could join his side now, angel or demon or not. It could be the two of them now, despite God and heaven and hell. He’s never been brave, though. 

“If you fall-- which you won’t-- of course you could join me,” Crowley manages to say.

Aziraphale swallows, considering that for a moment, before he finally nods. “You’re too good for me, Crowley.” 

“Trust me,” Crowley murmurs. They’re still holding hands. “It’s entirely selfish.”


	12. Chapter 12

It goes like this: all love stories are the same, despite their characters and beginnings and endings. There’s always a thread of hope. 

“Do you ever think about love?” Aziraphale asks quietly. He has his head resting on the back of the chair, eyes staring up at the ceiling as if God is going to come peering through the plaster. 

They’re not drunk, not in the way humans can get, but they have loose lips and a glow about their cheeks that only comes with being awake when the rest of the world is asleep. 

On the couch across from him, Crowley shrugs. “When the occasion calls for it.” 

“What occasion calls for thinking about love?” 

Again, Crowley shrugs. It’s another ineffable thing, love. One of those things that he can think to death in order to understand, and he’ll only have grasped the surface. There are only a few things in this world that he loves, and if he were to explain why, words would fail him. He doesn’t answer Aziraphale, worried that just the vaguest answer would betray him. 

Aziraphale continues without his answer. “Sometimes I think about it. Humans are so obsessed with it, you know? They don’t think they’re worth anything without it.” 

“‘To love another person is to see the face of God,’” Crowley mutters. He stares at the bookshelves, wondering if that particular quote adorns one of the books here. 

“I thought you didn’t read,” Aziraphale says blandly.

Crowley shrugs. “I liked Victor Hugo. He made my job very easy. Could be tempted into anything. Besides, I was the inspiration for that line.” 

“You were the inspiration for a line about love and God,” Aziraphale echoes, as if he can’t process it. 

“Contrary to popular belief,” Crowley says, “I am capable of feeling love and talking about God.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, though he hadn’t been entirely sure. He had known, somewhere that he couldn’t name, deep down in between his heart and lungs and spine, that Crowley could love in a way that true evil couldn’t. But there’s a difference between being capable of love and wanting to give it. He could hope until kingdom come that Crowley would give away love, but that wouldn’t make it happen, wouldn’t make Aziraphale feel his affection. 

“I can’t sense love in the same way angels can, but I can still feel it myself,” Crowley says, an edge to his voice. 

Aziraphale knows he shouldn’t ask. He knows that this can’t end well, can’t end with what he wants to hear. He knows this will only hurt. Despite himself, he asks, “Who do you feel it for then?” 

There’s a moment of silence, where Aziraphale can count the number of Crowley’s breaths. He feels each one like a shot glass of guilt into his lungs. 

“Don’t do this, angel,” Crowley says softly. A wave of something-- shame?-- rushes past his ears and behind his eyes. They’re too close to the truth, too close to all the things Crowley can’t bring himself to share. He can’t tell what Aziraphale is thinking, can’t tell what Aziraphale wants from him. There are so many things he wants to give, so many things he can’t take. 

Aziraphale doesn’t look at him. He just stares at the ceiling, studying the grain. He thinks maybe he knows, but he wants to hear Crowley say it, wants to hear the words, the name fall from his lips. He wants to hear Crowley, quiet and desperate and in love, say the words. 

Aziraphale knows that it’s not going to happen. They’ve made too many promises to other people, to other sides. They’re enemies who trust each other. Aziraphale can’t call them friends, even if he knows that’s what they are. It’s a betrayal to love Crowley. While that won’t stop his heart, it will stop his words and hold his tongue. 

He says, “Okay.” 

Crowley nods. 

They sit in silence for a moment, studying the backs of their hands. Before one of them can break the silence, there’s a knocking at the door, furious and desperate. 

“It’s three in the morning,” Crowley says slowly. “Is that-- is that one of your angels?”

Aziraphale shakes his head, frowning. “I don’t sense anything ethereal or occult, besides the two of us, of course. Do you?” 

“No,” Crowley says. “It’s human. Do you think they’ll go away?” 

The knocking resounds through the bookshop, louder and angrier this time. Aziraphale sighs, stepping away from his chair and Crowley to go answer the door. It’s the 50s, and one of those decades, Aziraphale discovered recently, when people need places to escape to. He’s always hated people trying to buy (steal) his books, but if the marginalized need a place to hide from the world, who is he to deny them? He’s doing plenty of hiding from the world himself. 

He opens the door slowly, the bell ringing out when he does so. There’s a girl standing there, blood against a split lip and exhaustion in her eyes. She’s clearly young, but strongly built with a brand of defiance in the set of her shoulders that Aziraphale wishes he had. 

“They say you’re the person to come to,” she says quietly. “When you’re in trouble.” 

Aziraphale stares at her, taking in the way she’s holding herself, with her back bent and eyes barely meeting his. An ill-fitting dress is tight against her body, like it had been perfectly tailored for someone that isn’t her. 

“It’s cold,” he says. “Come inside, my dear.” 

She stares at him warily-- though she had asked for his help, there’s something a little terrifying about accepting it. He motions for her to come inside, stepping away from the doorway, and she follows him. The door shuts behind her, the bell a small and hopeful ring. 

Aziraphale leads her to the back room where Crowley sits, heart still beating a second out of tune. “What’s your name?” 

The girl swallows nervously, eyes dancing between Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley raises an eyebrow, as if egging her on. “Andrew.” 

“That doesn’t sound right,” Crowley says slowly, studying her. While Aziraphale was at the door, he had put the sunglasses back on, covering up the eyes Aziraphale had found a love of staring into. But even if the girl can’t see his eyes, there’s something entrancing about looking at him, something that makes her want to tell the truth. The truth is a dangerous temptation few can resist. 

“I call myself Abigail,” she says, a whisper. 

Azirphale nods approvingly, showing her to a spot on the couch. “Good name. Wife of David, you know.” 

“You have her eyes,” Crowley says, smirking. He offers her a glass, though she’s clearly underage. “Have some wine.” 

She takes the glass hesitantly, taking a small sip. Crowley snickers when she makes a face and sets the glass down. “I don’t think I like wine.” 

“This is an Australian Riesling!” Aziraphale exclaims, frowning at her. “It’s a classic and sophisticated-- ”

“Angel, please,” Crowley mutters, shushing him. “Abigail, why are you here if you don’t like the wine?” 

Abigail hesitates, looking as if she wants to pick up the glass again, even if just to have something to do with her hands. “My-- my friend says this is the place to go when you’re… in trouble.” 

“Is that your friend’s dress too?” Crowley asks, more out of curiosity that antagonism. The sleeves are tight at the wrists and several inches too short, and the dip of the neck cuts down farther than it has any right doing. 

Abigail glances between the two of them, hands tensing as if gearing up for a fight. “I-- I’m not afraid of you-- ”

“You don’t have to be,” Aziraphale interrupts, raising a hand. He shoots a glare at Crowley before turning his attention back at her. “We’re not going to hurt you. You can trust us. Crowley didn’t mean anything bad by that.” 

She relaxes, but only slightly. “Her name is Olivia.” 

“Another strong name,” Crowley notes, tapping his glass of wine with a long fingernail. “Though the dress doesn’t fit you very well, does it?” 

“It’s not like I have a lot of options,” she mutters. “People wouldn’t take kindly to me in a dress shop.” 

At this, Aziraphale brightens for a moment. “Lucky for you, we might have some dresses in the back that would fit you. Crowley, my dear, would you mind?” 

“Those are my dresses,” Crowley mutters, but he stands up anyways. “Fine. Come on, Abigail.” 

He leads her from the room to a small closet that appeared only moments ago, having transported the contents of Crowley’s own closet to the bookshop. Aziraphale is nothing if not creative, Crowley thinks, only slightly bitterly. It takes just a few moments before Abigail had found something she liked-- Crowley prides himself on his fashion sense-- and changed, and she made her way back to the couches. 

“Thank you,” she says, more confident now. She tugs slightly at the sleeve, the material softer than anything she had worn before. “It fits perfectly.” 

“It’s a miracle,” Crowley mutters, all at once bored and annoyed and happy for her. Sometimes Aziraphale thinks that he’s a walking contradiction.

Abigail glances at him before sitting down again, smoothing out the fabric of the dress. “I don’t know anyone else who does… this kind of thing.” 

“Displays basic human decency?” Aziraphale asks, an ironic smile trailing at the corners of his lips. “My dear, I do hope there are more people like us somewhere. And you’re welcome to stay, of course, but may I ask why you’re in trouble?” 

Abigail shrugs, and Crowley takes another tired sip of his wine. She says, “The landlord kicked me out, when he saw me in a dress. I don’t have any way of contacting someone who could help.”

“We have a phone you can use if you would like,” Aziraphale tells her. It’s not one of his favorite inventions, but he has to admit it does make reaching people-- mainly Crowley-- easier.

She nods, but doesn’t meet their eyes. “I just… I don’t know anyone who understands. Olivia… God, she doesn’t even know I have her dress, I stole it last week.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes widen comically, and Crowley smirks. “Brave of you,” he says, raising his glass of wine in a toast. He takes a sip, and then his voice darkens. “All of this, really, is quite brave of you.” 

“Thank you,” she says, daring to look up at him. “I just… I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. Whichever way I dress, it comes back to hurt me. All the people I love most will hate me.” 

Aziraphale swallows, glancing over at Crowley. He’s wearing the face of someone who understands all too well, who knows what it feels like to love something that hates you, to be something that hurts. It makes Aziraphale want to cry, want to reach out and promise Crowley that he’s loved. It’s altogether different, and altogether the same. 

Not sure which of them he’s talking to anymore, Aziraphale just says, “Not everyone will hate you, my dear. The world isn’t as terrible as you think it is.” 

Abigail shrugs, rubbing her hands over her face. “Maybe. I just-- I can’t be who I want to be, and I can’t love who I want to. I don’t know, maybe I’m just not meant to be happy.” 

“Hey,” Crowley says, in an uncharacteristically soft voice. “As someone who knows a lot about loving someone you can’t have, I promise you that it’s going to be okay. And as someone who can’t be who he wants to, I promise there are people somewhere who will let you.” 

Aziraphale studies him for a long moment, unsure of what that means. He knows so much about Crowley, knows him better than anyone else in this wretched world, but somehow, he’s still a mystery. There are things that the two of them won’t say. They both know what they are, but that doesn’t make them any easier to accept. 

Abigail shrugs slightly, and Crowley tries again. “It’s dangerous,” Crowley says slowly, “but it’s worth it when you find that person and place where you can be yourself.” 

“It would take a miracle to find that,” Abigail says. Not denying Crowley, but not accepting it either. 

Aziraphale glances between her and Crowley, thinks about all the things he and Crowley will never be, and all the things this girl needs, and makes a split second decision. “Maybe there’s a miracle in your future, my dear.”


	13. Chapter 13

It goes like this: sometimes you just need a leap of faith. 

The thing about the universe is that it will lay you out on a bed of feathers, then strip you of kindness and call it beautiful when all you are is bone. The skeleton is not a kind thing and not a strong thing, just something that keeps your thinning muscles together, tying heartstring to brain. Crowley thinks maybe there’s something breaking that connection in his body, though, something that has taken away reason and left something hopeless. 

Holding Aziraphale’s hand, having an arm around his shoulders, pressing a palm to the small of his back, it makes Crowley want to stay above ground forever. He doesn’t think he couldn’t ever go back to Hell, to the dark hallways and the slick of the stone walls, not when he has known the touch of the light. He doesn’t want God’s forgiveness, he could care less about Her, but by Christ, Crowley wants Aziraphale to love him. 

He’s pretty sure that he is loved, nearly perfectly sure that Aziraphale cares about him. The two of them have lived this dance for so long that Crowley can predict his next steps, his last leap. But he wants a new ballad to dance to, and Lord, he wants to hold the angel’s hand. 

The problem is that he always thought a romance can’t be tragic if no one confesses their love. But there’s something more tragic about that, about strangers who love each other but never say it. About a love that’s lost before it’s even gained. All of those heartbeats spent following each other around and never saying anything-- that’s tragic in its own way. In a way that Crowley doesn’t want to feel anymore. 

“The world is fucking doomed,” Crowley tells Aziraphale, bursting into the bookstore. The bell rings as Crowley kicks the door closed behind him, a gust of wind sending shivers up his spine. “If the world is doomed, we deserve at least one good thing. We’ve suffered enough for the world to owe us that much.” 

Aziraphale stares at him, a book he was reshelving still in his hand. There’s no one else in the bookshop, and the lights are dim, and it’s dark outside, and Crowley is unraveling. His sunglasses are off, and he stares straight at Aziraphale, finding the same eyes he memorized all those centuries ago. 

“What do you mean ‘the world is doomed?’” Aziraphale asks, focusing on all the wrong things. 

Crowley keeps walking, shoving past Aziraphale. He begins to pace around the shop, weaving through shelves and rows of books. He doesn’t know if he’s talking loud enough for Aziraphale to hear him, but he doesn’t care. There are words in his head, words he never knew how to say, and they demand an audience. It’s something like a soliloquy, with Crowley baring the soul he isn’t sure he has. He wants this, no he needs this. He needs to say it. 

“The world is fucking doomed,” Crowley repeats, walking down the aisle featuring both Shakespeare and Jules Verne. “My side is going to bring up the antichrist and your side is going to try to kill him and my side is going to raise an army and your side-- you get the point-- Aziraphale, the world is going to fall apart one day and I’m not going to miss heaven or hell.” 

He takes a breath, turning the corner. His footsteps are pounding in his ears, but he’s sure that Aziraphale is still standing at the front entrance, staring at the door. Time isn’t moving right, with everything both too fast and too slow at the same time. 

Crowley stops, standing in front of a collection of prophecy books. “When everything falls apart and I get tossed into the void with every other broken thing, I’m not going to miss heaven or hell.” 

Aziraphale walks forward in that silent way he always does, but Crowley is so attuned to his pulse that he knows when Aziraphale comes to the other side of the shelf. Behind a stack of the Sibylline books, he can see the back of Aziraphale’s head, as if he were leaning against the shelf. Crowley mimics him, closing his eyes. If it weren’t for the bookshelf, they would be leaning back to back and Crowley would reach his hand over and find Aziraphale’s fingers. 

“What would you miss?” Aziraphale asks. He knows the answer. They both do. But it’s not the knowing of the thing, it’s the saying and the speaking of the thing that brings it to life. 

“Humans,” Crowley says. It’s a darker confession than it sounds, and Aziraphale stiffens. 

There’s nothing safe about humans, nothing to have faith in. There’s only hope, and that’s not always enough. Not for a demon and not for an angel. Having hope is like feeding a family on a can of words, like stretching a dream over a tragedy. It doesn’t cover the ups and downs. It doesn’t shelter you when hell comes knocking on the door. 

But hell has always been a hazard of Aziraphale’s feelings for Crowley, and that hasn’t made his heart beat any slower. 

Aziraphale doesn’t say anything, and Crowley continues past the hesitation. “I would miss humans and gardens and cars and things that aren’t completely sinful or completely holy. I would miss bookstores and the Ritz and wine and-- ”

Crowley stops, breaks off. The silence is palpable, a thick thing that Crowley could drown in. It comes up in tendrils around his throat, sliding down his tongue and tearing out his heart. He has opened up his ribcage and all his mockingbirds flew out of his chest and now-- now he has nothing left. 

“When everything falls apart,” Aziraphale says, “and I get tossed wherever lost angels go, I would only miss one thing.” 

Crowley doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t need to, but it still feels like a decisive act. Like a semicolon in a poem. 

“What would you miss?” he asks. 

Aziraphale doesn’t hesitate. “I’d miss you, Crowley.” 

“If there were no consequences,” Crowley starts to say. His words are straight from a sonnet, from a love poem he never had the guts to write but lives all the same. “If it were our last night on Earth, and nothing else mattered, I would kiss you.” 

Aziraphale swallows, just the slightest exhale from his lips. “If nothing else mattered, I would kiss you back.” 

“It’s a shame things matter.” 

“It is.” 

Crowley opens his eyes. The bookshelves don’t seem real, as if every part of this world is just a dream he made up one night. Maybe he’s been sleeping for a century, or maybe this is just his final sleep. Maybe this is the void where broken things go: confessing your love to someone you can’t have. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says. He says it with a twist to the word, something soft and loving in a way that only an angel, a special one, could say it. “Can we pretend that nothing matters? Just for a moment?” 

“Just for a kiss?” Crowley asks, a ghost of a question. 

“Just for a kiss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so so much for reading this, i'm so thankful for the kudos and comments from y'all, and i'm really proud of what i've written here. i hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it♡


End file.
